Papa Noel

As much as sometimes enjoy complaining about Paraguay (and do I ever), sometimes I can´t help but find an absolute, inexplicable, and innocent joy in it. Like the other day, sitting in the sand, toes in the (stream), grabbing chunks of juicy watermelon with my hands, while the boys throw each other in the water and the women wash clothes. I feel an incredible peace that is hard to find back home because there is always something else I could be doing. Right now, my job is to integrate into the community, so here goes.

I met a half-German man last week, and I spent the evening with him and his wife. They are a young, innovative couple, and, for the first time since I´ve been in site, I felt like I had someone I could have an intelligent, unguarded conversation with. I could speak my mind about sensitive topics and not be thinking about what I should be saying. There´s a big German mennonite population around here, so Juan Carlos said he would take me to visit his community. He showed me around his property, where he keeps bees and grafts citrus trees, and we talked about all sorts of things from birth control to religion.

When he asked me what my religion was (a frequent question), I felt comfortable telling him that spirituality was important to me, but that I didn´t adhere to one religion. I told him that religion can do good things for people, but I do not agree with the way it is frequently practiced, without thought and by merely copying the ways of parents.

It felt like a simplified answer to a question I hadn´t really thought about in a while, despite all the questioning. What is my religion? It´s been a while since someone has asked me that in English. It feels like a copout to just say that I´m spiritual, and the answer seems disappointing to some. The question sounds cliché, but it´s common enough that I feel like I should put more effort into my answer. First of all, what is religion? A belief in some things and a disbelief in others? Is it tradition, or ethics, or ritual? How do I explain myself to Catholics who only know other Catholics? I wonder some of them go to mass because they feel closer to the Divine, or if it is just what is done. Are they aware of a power greater than themselves that they call God? I´ve been to mass here, and I feel no such thing. I wonder if they will understand if I tell them that I feel God in any place at any given moment, in those inexplicable coincidences, and in myself. I never thought my ´religion´needed to be categorized or defined.

And the rollercoaster continues. It was hard to get used to the new family I´m staying with now, a few kilometers down the road from where I was previously. Even the wind blows differently. I´m living out of a backpack, moving to a new family every 15 or so days. It always feels like I´m camping, and I miss not having a home base. When I ask when the construction of my house will get started, I am told not to worry about it. They are still lacking the cement for the foundation, but, no problemo, there will be another meeting about it in a couple weeks. At least there´s talk.

The other night, I went to a resa, where everyone in the community prayed for and celebrated the life of a woman who died recently. They slaughtered a cow for the occassion, and the meat was hanging on awning when I got there, with everyone sitting around, drinking terere, as usual. The Señora had invited me over to eat dinner with them, and I had naively assumed that we would be eating cow meat (steak if I was lucky). But when she proudly brought me to the table, I was placed in front of a steaming bowl of blood soup with chunks of brain, heart, tongue and whatever other cow organs I had no intention of eating. Not wanting to disrespect my host, I dipped some mandioca into the broth and avoided making direct eye contact with the contents of my bowl. I wanted to cry and then vomit.

On a happier note, I´ve started working on my garden. With my sharpened machete, I went over to a neighbor´s house to cut some takuara (bamboo) to make my fence. I hauled it back to my garden site, and my host brother and brother-in-law helped me to strip and split it. After lunch, my host mom took me to the forest out back, where we were supposedly going to gather wood for my garden posts. She ended up giving me a tour of the property, bringing me to a neighbor´s house to terere (yes, it´s a verb, too) and help her carry melons back. On the way back through the woods, she told me that she actually already had fenceposts that I could use back at the house. Foiled again.

On Christmas Eve, I was feeling the absence of family, but I was comforted by the text messages I got from my Peace Corps friends about their experiences slaughtering cows and eating sheep´s brains. It´s nice to know I´m not alone in this. Most of the day was spent preparing the feast we would eat around midnight. We gathered ribbons and plant material from the yard to make an elaborate nativity scene, cooked (no Paraguayan meal is complete without mandioca, meat, and some sort of corn product), and drank clerico, a wine fruit punch. We got a tata (fire) going in the front yard to grill the meat, and we sat around for hours as visitors stopped by and we took our turns visiting neighbors. At the strike of midnight, we all kissed each other, like New Years, even the sleeping children and grandpa.

At that moment, I felt a surge of gratitude for this family who drives me crazy, but who has included me so completely into their family for the holidays, however different their customs may be. Sometimes I feel very far away, and those moments are precious, when I feel like I´m exactly where I should be. I try to keep in mind that it is, indeed, a blessing to have people and customs to miss.

Feliz Navidad y Nuevo Año!

The Long Way Home

After much adventuring, I finally made it to my site. It seemed like everything was going askew somehow, and all I could do was laugh (and sometimes cry) at God´s cruel joke on me. On Tuesday, Jason, Christina, and I took a bus from Asunción together to Villarrica. By the time we pulled into the station, I had missed my connecting bus, the only one that goes to my site per day. Because my phone was still not working, we started making calls on Christina´s phone and got the number of a volunteer, Brennan, who lives in Villarrica. He had the day off and gave us directions to his house. Christina decided to stay the night with me, so we saw Jason off and made our sweaty way on foot with our packs.

Brennan made us fresh mburukuja (passionfruit) juice, which we drank under the avacado trees while his neighbors serenaded us. He showed us around town and even had a spare bedroom for us. The next morning, when Christina and I returned to the bus station, I found out that my bus would arrive two hours later than I had been told. No problem. After killing some time at the internet cafe, I asked someone why my bus still had not arrived, and I was told that it would not come at all because it rained the night before. As soon as she said that, I started laughing hysterically. I just couldn´t stop. Everyone started staring at the crazy American who just lost it.

After talking to my contact on the phone, I decided to take a bus to Paso Yobai, about an hour from my site and where another volunteer lives. I naively sat in the back of the bus, and by the time I arrived I was covered in a layer of red dirt. As it turns out, there was a change of plans, and there was no vehicle that could take me and my stuff the rest of the way to Arroyo Moroti. Andrea and I walked to the police station and to the military barracks outside of town, but no one had a car. We did find a neighbor who aggred to take my pack to Arroyo Morroti for me on his moto, and then I would walk. For compensation, I went over to the gas station and filled an empty 2-litre soda bottle with nafta, then watched my pack bump haphazardly away from me. I started walking around 6, enjoying the sun as it made its decent into the hills to the west. On a side note, the verb they use for the sunset is ¨enter¨ and the verb for sunset is ¨leave.¨ I like that. There was still a hint of pink left in the sky when I realized that I didn´t know where I was. This was the same road I had biked a few weeks ago, but I suddenly didn´t recognize the fork in the road, and there were no houses in site.

I took a left and picked up the pace, spotting a power line in the distance and thinking it might follow a main road. It didn´t. There was only a footpath, but I did see a house, so I cut through a mandioca field to get there. When no one was home, I returned to the raod I had been on, but not liking the look of the jungle path ahead of me, turned back. When I heard the sound of an engine, I ran toward it. It was a farmer, Giraldo, returning home on his tractor. He stopped and gave me directions to Arroyo Moroti, and then, taking pity, offered to take me part of the way on his tractor. I hopped on the back and we proceeded, full speed, down the jungle trail. It didn´t seem like it was frequently-travelled road because we were falling branched the whole way, and by the time he let me off at the crossroads, I was covered in leaves and brush like a regualar jungle bum. From there, I only had to walk another fifteen minutes to get to my contact´s house.

But I made it. The best part of the story, however, is that just before I started my walk, Andrea informed me that a 16-meter long, pregnant anaconda had just escaped out of someone´s basement in a nearby town. What?! I can´t even imagine what that would look like. So, I survived getting lost in the Paraguayan campo and a potential encounter with a very large snake.

As my contact put a steaming plate of pig fat in front of me, I kept thinking, anytime now, things will get easier. The next day, I washed most of my clothes, which had suffered from a run-in with an open bottle of shampoo, and then hopped on the bus, which would take me a few kilometers down the road to the family´s house where I was to stay for the next week and a half. The Women´s Comite was meeting when I got there, so I joined in. I had been looking forward to staying in one place, but they thought it would be a good idea if I moved houses every three days to get to know everyone. I was so flustered, I said ok and tearfully hauled my pack down the road to another house. On top of that, I found that I don´t get cell phone coverage here, except for in certain spots between primera and segunda linea and only when the wind blows the right way.

Things did begin to improve, though. I broke gender boundaries on Friday and went out to the woods to work with the men. I helped them haul logs onto an oxcart, then balanced on top of the oxcart and then unloaded it in the big brick oven they use to make charcoal. I asked if they planned to plant new trees to replace the ones they cut down. They should their heads. ¨Opa!¨ This means ¨over¨ or ¨done¨. What´s done? I wondered. The forest? They need wood to make carbón to make fire to eat, and I´m not sure if it was an outside-the-box idea to say that if they keep cutting down the trees, there won´t be any left someday. I think there´s a lot I have to learn about the language and culture before I can go down that road.

I thought that Paraguayans had exhausted their uses for flour, salt, and oil, but Magdalena (the señora I´m staying with) served me a new breakfast concoction. It even has a name--hervido--or something like that. It was served in a bowl with a spoon and sort of resembled oatmeal, which got me excited. To be so, the first ten or so bites did taste good, washed down with rot-your-teeth sweet cocido, but after a while, it started to taste, and feel, like what it was: crumbles of flour and salt, fried and held together by oil.

Lastnight, though, I showed them something else you can do with flour. I made pizza. Magdalena runs an almacen (little store) out of the house and the delivery guy (who brings bags of whatever in the back of his pick-up from Villarrica) brought some yeast on request. Heladio, the señor, had been asking me if we eat the same food in America as they eat here, and he threw out what he knew about American cuisine--pizza. It´s hard to explain, or at least to get across the idea to Paraguayans, the concept of America, the melting pot. We have food and people and culture from all over the world, and it´s all sort of American. Heladio also asked me if all Americans have blue eyes, like me. Where do I start with the explanations? My own sister doesn´t even have blue eyes like me.

While the pizza was baking, they gave me some win and coke. I told them that wine was perfect to drink with pizza--very Italian. They scoffed at the idea of wine and cheese together. Apparantly, the wine and cheese combination is on the same scale as mixing watermelon and terere--they´re not accustomed to such lethal nonsense. But wine and cheese, I protested, is a classic combination. It´s as basic as peas and carrots, salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly. But I realized that my examples provide absolutely no clarification.

I´m enjoying staying with the family, and they agreed to let me stay longer. I really don´t want to move every three days. I think I might go even crazier than I´ve already become. But it is hard not to have a home. I try to think of it like a travelling adventure, like I´m hitchhiking around Paraguay and whereever I land, I am. But it´s different because I´m landing in someone else´s home on a different planet. There´s no time that I´m off-duty, no clock to punch out on and go take a shower, have a drink and talk about all the crazy shit that happened that day, sharing my leftovers with the dogs, chickens, and piglets that wait under the table. And each day is epic.

This morning I woke up at 4am to catch the bus back to Villarrica to meet the governor. Well, the bus didn´t come. Determined to get into town to see friends and reconnect with the world, I caught a ride with a passing truck, who brought me to a crossroads a half hour away. From there, I started walking through the morning fog and caught another ride to a a bus stop with more frequent service. And just like that, I have a computer and a phone at my fingertips. With everything that has happened during the past week, I can´t imagine what the next two years will be like. Jahechata. (We shall see.)

America...Reagan Country

The last couple weeks of training were a whirlwind of completing projects and visiting families in the community I had formed relationships with. We tilled the green manures we had planted at the beginning of training back into the earth and we grabbed the chickens we had raised from wittle bitty chicks by their legs and carried them home to our respective families for dinner.

My host sisters who live in Buenas Aires came home for the holidays, so I got to meet them. The house was full of jabbering women, trying on new clothes from Argentina and doing their hair--kind of a shock after hanging out with mostly guys for so long. All the guys in my group have been growing their facial hair out, and the for the occassion of swearing in as Peace Corps volunteers, created some fine mustache art.

I am a full-fledged Volunteer with a capital "V." I was sworn in at the U.S. Embassy, amidst green, manicured grounds and pools, protected by six marines, countless security gurads, and a token deer, who grazes the property. My own little America away from America. Signs at the entrance prohibit guns. Ya think? I never got used to coming home at night to see my host dad smoking a cigarette in the dark with a pistola at his side "for protection."

These few days I have in Asuncion are the antithesis of my regular campo lifestyle. I have AC, a TV with English movie channels, and my first hot shower in months. In this summer heat, a cold shower suffices, but there's just something about hot water that gives me that so-fresh-and-so-clean-clean feeling.

The other night we has sunset g+ts on the rooftop terrace and watched the hazy, pink skyline and the Rio Paraguaya behind it. And beyond that, Argentina. There are some beautiful, old Colonial buildings, which is a nice change fromt he hastily thrown up structures I've been inhabiting. And the food! Paraguayan food has definately grown on me, though it's a love-hate relationship. (I spent my last night with my host family throwing up into a cardboard box). It is nice to eat something besides greasy tortillas and grissly meat. We went out for Korean food, and I gorged myself on seaweed salad and grilled tofu and veggies.

Now all of us are picking up last-minute items in the city and enjoying each other's company before we go our separate ways, which is exciting and intimidating. My visits to the internet cafe will probably become less frequent, until I can get a bike or a horse to transport me on those hilly, dirt roads. Until then, peace.

Musings on a New (Soon-To-Be) Home

Where do I begin? On Wednesday, at the end of a long, anxious day, I sat in a room while my boss held a folder that contained my future. My future site, that is, where I will be living for the next two years. I will be living in a small town whose name translates to ¨White Stream,¨where I will be a first-time volunteer. After finding out the news we all went to the bar to celebrate, and a few us missed the last bus out of town. So...we started walking. Knowing it would take hours to get to the next intersection, where we could catch a bus, and also realizing that I still had to pack and get up at 5am to go visit my site, I found some people to call us a taxi. Once at home, I packed my dayback with clothes and toiletries for the next five days, slept a few hours, drank cocido in the dark, and then walked to the bus stop at dawn.

As I got closer to my destination, the landscape changed. All of the sudden, there were mountains--green, rolling mountains, and big trees, and vineyards. When I got off at the stop where I was to meet my contact, I heard people shout "Americana." And sure enough, Gabriel (my new dad), was there to greet me. He had ridden his moto to the bus stop to make sure the next bus I got on was the right one and told the driver to let me off in front of his house (Gabriel´s). The bus chugged its way up and down dirt roads, crossing rickety bridges. Some women on the bus start chatting with me, offering me térere, and were so excited to find out I spoke Guarani. As usual, the subject got around to if I have a boyfriend, and if I´m going to marry a Paraguayan, and when I marry a Paraguayan, will I live here or go back to America? I tell them that I don´t even know where I´m sleeping tonight. When I got off at Gabriel´s house, his wife, Gertrudis, had lunch ready for me. A plate of hot pork from the pig they recently slaughtered. (I found the rest of the animal--head included--in the fridge). Then I took a siesta.

Gertrudis is the president of the Comité de Agricultores, and she was eager to show me around town. The next day, there was a health commission meeting at the next big town over, and I wanted to check it out--also to visit the Peace Corps volunteer who´s lived there for over a year now. It takes only 20 minutes on a moto, but since it´s Peace Corps policy that I don´t ride a moto (to the shock of everyone in the town---everyone drives a moto) I had to borrow a bike from a neighbor. I was looking forward to riding a bike, but I soon discovered what I had gotten myself into. There is practically no level ground and the road is mainly sand. Plus, I was riding a bike with two flat tires, one gear, and barely-working breaks. So, I arrived an hour later at the municipality hot and sweaty. I hung out with Andrea, my new PC neighbor and then made the trip back in the heat of the day. When I finally made it back home, I jumped in the shower and devoured a plate of ribs my Gertrudis placed in front of me. Man, I have never eaten ribs before, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I even soaked up the extra grease with some mandioca and made those bone-slurping sounds I hate when Paraguayans do.

I also went with Ñati and Paula (13 and 17) to the colegio for their last day of school. I met some of the teachers and talked to one about helping teach a class on cooperatives. The students hosed down and swept out the classrooms and then had a dance party at 10am before heading home for lunch. Besides the two girls at the house, there is the 95-year-old aguelo who is blind and just about deaf. He talks to himself and doesn´t know if it´s day or night, so talks whenever he feels like it. Sometimes he thinks he´s a kid again, other times (most of the time) he´s asking for more caña. He likes to wear these teeny-bopper sunglasses with one eye piece missing, and his bed is in the backyard under the grape arbor. He is carried from bed to chair, following the shade, and pees and spits tobacco into a metal cup. He also has an 8-year old son, Hervasio, who also lives at the house, but the mother (who´s in her early 30s) lives somewhere else with her other son (Hervasio´s twin). Apparently, she´s poor and cannot afford to keep both children. Hervasio is the sweetest boy, and I hope I get to know him better. He´s growing up in some unusual circumstances. The other day, I saw him sitting next to his father, yelling into his ear.

One morning, I woke up to find Gabriel, Gertrudis, and her brother gathered around what looked like a series of crumpled up plastic bags. I walked over and watched Gabriel inspect said item with pliers and a stick. They didn´t know what it was, but it was something strange, found hanging from a tree, they said. What do we do with strange items in Paraguay? We burn them. Maybe it´s a bomb, Gabriel says, and I don´t yet understand his humor enough yet to know if he´s joking or not. Probably so, because he lauged when I told him it might be dangerous to throw a bomb in a fire. Then the aguelo felt like working, so he was given the task of shelling castor beans, which are then sold to make motor oil.

On Sunday, I accompanied Gertrudis to church, and only as we were walking in did she ask me if I was Catholic. No, but I have respect for religion. At the end of the sermon (pretty boring), Gertrudis got up to make an announcement. She told the entire congregation that they had a Peace Corps volunteer (me) to live with them for the next two years and then, on the spot, asked me to present myself. So, I stood up, unprepared, in front of a roomful of eager, brown eyes and told them a few things about myself in Guarani. And then they applauded.

After church, I want to the Farmers´Committee meeting, most of which I did not understand. Gertrudis explained that they were talking about where to build my house. Build my house? I asked Gertrudis how much that would cost. I was told not to worry about it. I was immediately brought back to "Peter Pan," when all the lost boys build cardboard house for Wendy, so she can sew buttons on their clothes. Later, we decided to build it on part of Gertrudis and Gabriel´s property, so I will have people looking out for me and a sunny space for a garden. I can´t believe I´m playing house in Paraguay.

After the meeting I went to the swimming hole to meet up the the high schoolers. (They had invited me to their end-of-the-year shebang). I feel so lucky to be living in a place with a clean body of water. I played volleball, joined in the mud-slinging fights, and ate lunch with them, my new young friends.

One afternoon, while we were just sitting around, drinking terere, Paula and a neighbor returned, speaking fast and animated, showing pictures on their cell phones. They claim to have seen Luison, the half-dog god of death in Guarani mythology. They supposedly found him, dead, in the school yard, and he smelled bad. Really? I asked Marisa (the 30-year-old sister) if she really believed it. Marisa said that she didn´t, but that lots of people do believe in the 7 Monsters (there are 6 more besides Luison), but that the monster that steals children is real because he stole a Señora´s child a long time ago. Wow. I´m living in the campo.

Yesterday, I woke up early to help Gabriel hoe his sugarcane field. Then he showed me the mandioca, the peanuts, the beans, the field he had to burn, the newer, better soil, and the rows of sesame he planted, but that have not germinated from a lack of rain. It´s going to be interesting to try to relate to farmers who are just living from one season to the next.

Lastnight, Gertrudis made grilled chicken, and Gabriel brough home a bottle of local (very local) wine for a going-away dinner. The bottle of wine cost about 75cents! I´m also living nearby to the German Mennonite communities, so I´d like to check out their operation. I was also excited to learn that there are a lot of indigenous Guarani communities around where I´ll be living.

This morning, I woke up at 3:30am for the bus that I was told would come at 4am. We ended up drinking hot mate until it finally came at 4:45 (time has a different meaning here). The aguelo, who had been up all night mumbling to himself, was asking for caña, and Gabriel relented and gave him a little bottle from the fridge. Gabriel then asked me if there were people like him in America, too. Yes, I said, there are people who are blind, people who cannot hear, people who are old and who can no longer remember things. On the bus, I was thinking about how there are not a lot of people in America who would care for their ailing grandparents the way they do here. Paraguay has a lot to share.

You, too, could be nailing pancakes to the wall

This is the long-awaited day when I find out where my site is, where I will live for the next two years. It´s Christmas come early. I rolled out of bed and stumbled to the latrine, kicking puppies and chickens out of the way. Then I tried the yogurt that I had sitting through the night, and found that it was perfectly curdled. I got some goat milk (the most delicious ever) from a neighbor, so I´ve been experimenting with goat yogurt, as well. After I drank my morning cocido, Christina, Nate, and Kieth came by, and off we went to the bus stop. The morning buses are always crowded with people and baskets of eggs, veggies, chickens, whatever people are bringing to market. It can be a challenge to get on and off the bus before it starts moving again.

It´s an exciting time. Training is coming to a close. Tomorrow, we all go to our respective sites for a 5-day visit in order to check things out and set up a place to stay when we first get there. I´m feeling better about my language. Yesterday I worked in the kokue (field) with my mom. We were weeding the corn, cassava, and peanut plants, and I could actually understand what she was saying. We may have had our first real conversation! She´s very difficult to understand, so she always has her kids translate for her. Her older daughters who live in Buenos Aires and are about my age are coming to visit soon, so that will be fun.

Last week, I was gone on Long Field Practice. Five of us trainees went to visit a current volunteer to practice our language and technical skills. I stayed with a really sweet family and slept with them (mom, dad, 5-year old, and 8-month old) in their one-room house. I got along with the mom, who´s 27, really well, and it was nice to see that I really can have Paraguayan friends here. We worked in the fields with various farmers and did a presentation (in Guarani) on a specific green manure, complete with a skit. It was fabulous.

On Saturday, there was an international music festival in a town about a half hour from where I live. It started at 8:30pm, and showcased singers, dancers, and musicians from Paraguay, Aregentina, Japan, and some other countries I didn´t catch. It ended at 3:30 in the morning, and becauses buses don´t start running until 4:30am, we walked for a ways. I finally got home when the roosters were crowing and the sky was turning pink. My parents had already been up for an hour, milked the cows, and were drinking their cocido by the fire.

In preparation for leaving for our sites, I´ve been hearing all sorts of stories about volunteers who go crazy. One woman, so the story goes, was found completely naked in her house, nailing pancakes to the wall. Another woman got so angry at a cow for eating her underwear that she stabbed the cow. We´ll see.